CIA memo origin of conspiracy theorist
James Corbett traces the shift in how we use the phrase conspiracy theorist back to a 1967 CIA memo designed to counter Warren Report critics. Lance DeHaven-Smith charts the data showing the term became significantly more prevalent in media after that specific document circulated. LexisNexis searches confirm the spike, but the usage flipped from describing a literal theory about conspiracy to almost exclusively mocking individuals as crazy or spreading disinformation. It looks like a psychological operation where the literal meaning gets ignored and people just think of a nutcase with a magic bullet instead.
Transcript (en)
Where does that term come from? It is demonstrable that in 1967, the CIA wrote an internal memo. And off the top of my head, I'm going to say 1035-960. Fact check me on that. That particular memo was a memo that was sent out to field agents or to media contacts that the CIA was working with at that time in 1967 to counter criticisms of the Warren report. But it was that phrase that's in that document, conspiracy theorist, that demonstrably, as Lance DeHaven-Smith talks about in that book, you can chart it on a graph, that term conspiracy theorist, of course, it existed before 1967. But from 1967 on, it started to become more and more and more prevalent and more used in the media, generally speaking. You can cite the number of times it's used in articles, you know, using a LexisNexis database search. You can actually plot it on a graph and show that after 1967, that phrase started to become used more and more often and specifically in that pejorative sense. these conspiracy theorists have questions about the Warren Commission but we all know that it was the lone nut with the magic bullet and that so clearly this is a type of psychological operation that has been remarkably effective because as I say no one thinks about this in its literal denotative meaning it is a theory about conspiracy no no no people think of it simply as a crazy person mouthing total disinformation If you enjoyed this, be sure to hit that like button and follow to stay up to date with what's going on in the world and everything else memes and markets. Peace.
